Australian Betting Operator PlayUp Offered Betting To Customers On The Exclusion List: Report

While gambling addiction and problem gambling are on the rise in Australia, the authorities are leaving no stone unturned to ensure compliance.

However, a recent report claims that the Australian betting operator PlayUp allowed bettors registered on the exclusion list with the bookmaker to wager. Allowing gamblers on the exclusion to list to bet on their platform is a strict violation of the company’s betting policies.

Being a licensed betting operator in the country, the betting operator has to ensure strict compliance with its code of conduct for its betting offerings.

The code of conduct mandates the company to have a self-exclusion list on its platform allowing gamblers to register themselves and not be offered betting products or allowed to wager.

Moreover, according to the latest legislation introduced in the parliament, the betting operators must have such a self-exclusion registry allowing customers to add themselves to the list.

According to the revised gambling regulations, it will be criminal for betting operators to not have such self-exclusion register facilitating problem gamblers and those with compulsive gamblign issues to self-exclude. Moreover, operators allowing those on the self-exclusion register to place wagers may have their licenses canceled.

Paul Fletcher, communications minister for the parliament has said that the new legislation was important because of “growing community concerns about the rapid growth and high rate of harm caused by online gambling.”

Commenting on the report, CEO Daniel Simic told Guardian Australia said that the company had “unintentionally” provided service to these self-excluded gamblers and that they were until recently about to place wagers.

Simic also said that the fault was not necessarily a problem of PlayUp. Calvin Ayre reports CEO PlayUp explaining that “each of these bookmaking operations is a separate business that is not allowed to share data. That means that those customers who have asked one bookmaker to be added to the self-excluded list may still be able to place wagers on another online site.”

“Each license has got its own list and we’re not supposed to be sharing data [between them] anyway. It doesn’t matter who owns it,” Simic explained.